Assessment

COnsulting

Coaching

Ontic is a personality development consultancy based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Our coaching approach is based on the notion that a clinical understanding of personality is a crucial component of success. We work with executives and leaders who display excellence in their fields and enable them to align their personality to their goals.

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  • Increase self
    awareness
  • Align personality
    strengths to goals
  • Remove barriers to
    growth and success
  • Optimise professional relationships

The complexity of Human Behavior

COACHING APPROACH
PERSONALITY
The Problem
CLINICAL APPROACH
THE SOLUTION
PERSONALITY
COACHING APPROACH
CLINICAL APPROACH
The Problem
THE SOLUTION

SUBJECTIVE ALIGNMENT

Subjective Alignment is a highly sophisticated approach to personality and performance assessment with the primary aim of aligning specific components of the client’s profile with their environment and goals. The model identifies aspects of the client’s psychological profile that hinder their progression and growth. All areas of misalignment as well as current and predicted consequences are represented and analyzed in a comprehensive report. These areas are then addressed throughout the follow-up process in order to promote sustainable change and track the outcomes of the intervention.    

optimize the effects that your personality style has on your occupational performance.

METHOD

ABOUT

Nardus Saayman

Nardus, the founder of Ontic, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Saxonwold, Johannesburg. He has a special interest in working with psychosis and has published numerous academic articles on the subject in both local and international journals. Nardus has presented his research at international conferences in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. He has been a member of the Ethics Advisory Committee of the South African Psychoanalytic Confederation for the last three years, and also provides training and supervision for psychotherapists and psychiatrists. Nardus also has a keen interest in how personality influences strategic thinking and business practice. His clinical and academic experience has enabled him to develop an assessment model of personality that captures the complexity of human behavior while rendering the findings ‘user friendly’ for the corporate environment. Nardus has worked with many executives to help them to identify how their personality influences their interaction styles with colleagues, staff, and clients, as well as their approach to work. His approach draws on various complimentary disciplines that include clinical psychology, sports psychology, psychometric testing, behavioral and neuropsychology, performance coaching, and lateral thinking. 

Move from complexity to clarity.

BENEFITS

  • Alignment of personality to specific goals
  • Improvement of interpersonal interactions
  • Removal of intrapersonal conflicts and stressors
  • Optimization of strategic thinking
  • Change at a deep and sustainable level
  • Ongoing support and adjustment to Subjective Alignment profile based on the outcome of the interventions

CONTACT

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Coaching approach

Traditional business coaching often relies on assessment instruments that evaluate observable behavior. The personality tests that are typically used, whether they are the original measures or alternative versions designed by service providers, are scalable. What they lack in depth they make up for in breadth. These tests can be useful when classifying individuals according to broad level sets of observable behavior. However, these tests do not assess personality at a level that captures true complexity. This means that the fears, anxieties, unresolved frustrations, and internal dynamics that truly influence the client are not identified and incorporated in the personal development process.

Examples of instruments typically used:

  • Myers Briggs 
  • Five-factor model of personality
  • 15FQ Model
  • 16PF Model
  • DiSC
  • Eysenck Personality Inventory 

In these tests, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences are constructed based on metrics that do not assess the individual’s personality on a clinical level. In other words, the true motivations for the individual’s behavior are not captured. 

Personality

An individual’s personality can be viewed as the foundation that grounds and stabilises all other efforts to enhance performance. Therefore an effective and nuanced understanding of personality is a crucial component of any strategy aimed at achieving personal and professional growth.

Personality is complex and difficult to define.  There is great variance in how personality can be measured and understood. Traditional corporate coaching and consulting measure and understand personality by assessing observable behavior, whereas  a clinical approach to personality includes an assessment of non-observable behavior. 

The Problem

There is a gap between traditional coaching and clinical assessment. 

What is needed is a model that combines the strengths of both approaches. 

CLINICAL APPROACH

Clinical instruments are designed to assess an individual’s personality at a level of true complexity. They capture the individual’s observable behavior, but more importantly, also capture non-observable behavior. Non-observable behavior includes the following:

  • How the individual wants to be seen.
  • The individual’s experience of their own emotions.
  • How the individual views other people, and how relationships are approached and defined. 
  • The individual’s approach to reality testing. 
  • The individual’s relationship with uncertainty. 
  • What the individual’s identity is constructed around, the core of their being. 
  • The individual’s relationship with rules, laws, morality, and ethics.

Examples of clinical instruments:

  • Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-IV)
  • Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory (MMPI-2)
  • Projective Assessments
  • Clinical Interviews

Why are clinical instruments not used in corporate?

  • Clinical instruments are not suited for direct use in the corporate environment due to ethical constraints. These instruments yield sensitive and potentially damaging information, and should be used in a psychotherapeutic setting by a clinical psychologist.